During the '60s, my friend Dave, a gifted engineering student attending UC Berkeley, contemplated pledging a fraternity. He was far removed from prudishness and frequently revealed an abundant capacity for raucous revelry -- why else join a fraternity? During a frat house visit one weekend, he witnessed a group of inebriated fraternity brothers laboring diligently to re-position a grand piano out of an upper story level of the house with the express purpose of watching the piano plummet toward a deafening crescendo on the pavement below.

Lacking the equivalent motivation years later to do likewise with our old upright piano here in Half Moon Bay, my wife and I elected instead to acquire a suitable locale and use for the piano we no longer desired. A successful garage sale found the piano a home, inviting entertainment for a local coastside youth camp. Regrettably, we deprived our artistically egocentric craving for attention by overlooking a more theatrical and provocative disposal of the piano.

In retrospect, we were too naively altruistic, art-challenged and unimaginative to stage the grandeur of anything like the recent pyrotechnical obliteration of a baby grand piano. Here, dubious art successfully triumphed over the commonsensical to the jubilation of 250 people, fondly reminiscent of the aforementioned animal house. Dave did give the fraternity a pass, deeming the piano's senseless demolition too offensive even for his youthful sensibilities. I theorize Dave and I, boorishly encumbered with philanthropic mindsets, remain simply out of tune with Timothy Leary and the times.

Tony Favero

Half Moon Bay